#oneaday Day 864: Grab bag

It has been a fairly boring day, so I will attempt to make it more interesting by talking about several things. Look at me go!

First up, my Analogue Pocket arrived today. Did I need another retro gaming handheld, particularly one that is quite pricy (and extremely pricy when you add the extortionate shipping and customs charges that come with getting one shipped to the UK)? No, of course I didn't. Did I get one anyway? Yes, of course I did. I have been interested in the Analogue Pocket ever since it was first announced and immediately sold out, so I have always been keeping an eye out for them becoming available again. As it happens, they became available again and I was in a position to be able to buy one without guilt, so that's exactly what I did.

I don't have a lot to report on it so far as I've only really set it up and given it a quick try with a few games so far. I am impressed from the little I've seen, though; the extremely, extremely high resolution screen means that it's capable of doing some wonderful display effects to recreate things like the original Game Boy's dot matrix display and the distinct "line" patterns on things like the Lynx and Game Gear displays. It can also do a nice Trinitron CRT simulation, as well as a number of other "generic" effects — or you can mix things up a bit, like applying a simulation of the DMG Game Boy screen onto something that would not have used that!

I'll doubtless have a lot more to say about it in the near future, but suffice to say for now that this thing seems to be built like a tank in handheld terms, and setting it up to use the MiSTer-style openFPGA cores using an application called PocketSync was quick and easy. PocketSync also takes care of things like downloading BIOS files, so it really is just a few clicks to get the thing set up to load any ROM you'd care to name on one of the supported platforms. It's nice to have the option for original cartridges, though, which was the Analogue Pocket's original unique selling point.

Anyway, that's the Pocket. Like I say, I'll do a more detailed writeup about it in the near future, as it's worth exploring in depth, I think. I'm particularly intrigued to try the nanoloop music creation software that comes built-in. It seems fiddly at first glance, but I'm sure once you get your head around the various button controls and know what everything does, it will become much more usable.

What else has happened today? I tried some American flavours of sugar-free Monster that one of our local convenience stores (the one we call "Funny Shop" to distinguish it from the nearby Tesco Express, and in homage to the fact that it sells unusual imported food products from around the world as well as domestic products) and they were both actually very nice. I tried the "Ultra Red White and Blue Razz" one, which is obnoxiously "patriotic", but, as the name suggests, just tastes of blue raspberry, while the Ultra Sunrise flavour might, in fact, be my all-time favourite Monster; it tastes like actual oranges. Not like orange soda flavour, like an actual orange. Highly recommended. I hope we see it more "officially" over here at some point; in the meantime, I will be counting on Funny Shop to keep me stocked.

I also tried the Taco variant of Buldak noodles. I have mixed feelings on this. It had a pleasant Mexican-esque smell once the powder and sauce went in, but in terms of flavour it was mostly overwhelmed by the Buldak hot sauce. The "flakes" pouch also contained some of the most unidentified foodstuffs I think I've ever seen. There was something that I assume was supposed to be a bit like taco meat, but I have no idea what it actually was, and it didn't really taste of anything. I am yet to find a Buldak variant that beats the regrettably discontinued Curry flavour, though the sweet fried chicken one is pretty good (yes, that means it is a sweet fried chicken flavour hot chicken flavour noodle) but seemingly getting a bit harder to find. I also tried the Rosé one the other day and had trouble distinguishing it from the Carbonara variant. It was nice, to be sure, and I'll probably seek it out again, but I'm not sure how it distinguishes itself from Carbonara.

Well, that's my day. I think a bit more handheld play is in my immediate future…

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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#oneaday Day 863: Where to even begin

One of the things that I've wanted to do for many years is get to grips with really being able to program the Atari 8-bit. This will be a completely useless and unmarketable skill for me to learn, but with the Atari 8-bit in particular having always been so important to me, it feels like a natural step in my enjoyment of the hobby. Only trouble is: I don't really know where to begin!

I still have a vague knowledge of Atari BASIC from my days typing in listings as a kid and inventing my own programs way back when, but I suspect a lot of the intricacies may have fallen out of my head at some point, as I haven't really done anything substantial in Atari BASIC since… well, since it was current and relevant. Beyond that, though, there are a wide variety of things that are a complete mystery to me. And I think the sheer wealth of things it's possible to learn, even on an old computer like an Atari 8-bit, is what makes it so daunting.

Do you get in-depth about how to handle variables and strings? Do you figure out the mathematical functions? Do you learn what all the different default graphics modes do, and what they are best used for? Do you tinker with the sound capabilities of the POKEY sound chip? Do you learn how to display, move and otherwise use player/missile graphics, aka hardware sprites? Do you learn about the display list, and how a display list interrupt is a different thing from manipulating the display list? Do you learn what a vertical blank interrupt is, and how to use it? And at what point in all of this do you "graduate" from BASIC to machine code?

This constant string of questions, which I could have extended to at least five times that length, is probably the big thing that holds me back from actually dipping into "learning how to program the Atari 8-bit" as a serious hobby. I'm sure there isn't really a "bad" place to start — and having an idea of what I would like to be able to program is probably a good way of determining what things I should focus on looking at first — but it's that old Analysis Paralysis thing again; when confronted with seemingly infinite options, you end up choosing none of them.

So I think the answer is probably just to pick a book — of which there are many available on the subject of Atari 8-bit programming, coming at it from myriad angles — and work my way through it. All of it. Then, from there, I can learn where I might want to head next, or figure out where the gaps in my knowledge are. Ultimately, then, I can develop a solid understanding of all the things I might "need" to know in order to be able to program the system effectively.

The reason why this is all on my mind right now is, of course, because of the increasing number of AI slop projects I've been seeing in retro gaming. Over on the website Atarimania today, two out of the four new additions to the database have "developed using AI" disclaimers on them. And one might ask: why don't I just "get the AI to do it for me"? Surely it is easier than ever to shit out a program-shaped object using Claude (they had to pick the cuntiest name possible for it, didn't they?) and then convince everyone that "I made this"?

Well, no. If you've spent any time reading this blog over the last few years, you'll know that this would provide me with absolutely no satisfaction whatsoever. Just because "an easy option" exists now doesn't mean I want or need to take it. In fact, I feel like with how likely it is that the AI bubble is going to burst and all of this crap is just going to go away one day — and God, I long for that day — it is all the more valuable to learn how to do something like this properly.

What I'd love to be able to do is create a game for the Atari 8-bit. That feels like a very far-off goal right now — but one way of looking at it is that back in the '80s, people had a fraction of the reference resources we have today (and no, I don't count AI in that) and were still able to learn how to do these things in their own time relatively quickly. So with a bit of determination, dedication and actually setting a bit of time aside to do this, I feel like I might be able to learn something.

As I say, it'll be something that is mostly useless and not really marketable, but who cares? Remember a time when hobbies were just things you did because they were fun, and you didn't feel the need to monetise them or even share them with others? I'm thinking that's what this has to be. Something that is just for me; something that I want to learn for myself. Not because I want to make and sell a game, but just because it's something I've always wanted to learn, and to be able to make something for my own satisfaction.

So I think maybe for the rest of this evening I might go spend some time tinkering in Atari BASIC on the ol' MiSTer…

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#oneaday Day 862: Scherzo

Musical comedy is a thing that is very difficult to get right. But when someone does get it right, it can be incredibly amusing.

I thought today I might share a variety of examples of musical comedy that I've always enjoyed, presented with the caveat that, as usual, these may not be on YouTube any more by the time you get around to reading this post. If that is the case, you'll just have to take my word for it that they were very funny indeed.

My most recent discovery in this regard is No Worries If Not! by Tom Cardy, an Australian musical comedian who makes well-produced music with endearingly low-budget videos, usually involving him in his home. This particular song is a foul-mouthed ode to being a freelance creative, and the disparity between the things you really want to say to your client, and the things that, if you are a socially anxious person — as many freelance creatives are — you actually end up saying.

I love the genuine-seeming anger in this one. Many people online will be able to relate to this one, I'm sure, particularly if they work in a creative field, but also if they're just someone who isn't naturally assertive. Kudos for the half-rhyme between "Please eat my butthole and call me king" and "Please don't email me after 4pm".

This is probably one of Tim Minchin's most well-known ones, but on the off-chance you've not seen/heard it before, I will let it speak for itself.

Sbassbear is a more niche pull, because it helps if you have at least a passing familiarity with Game Grumps beforehand — though they have done some of their own original stuff, too. The great thing about Sbassbear is that they take utterly ridiculous, silly moments from the Grumps' playthroughs of various games and turn them into legitimate bangers. This song, while based entirely on a throwaway comment about having low testosterone, is kind of beautiful in its own thoroughly stupid way.

This is one of my absolute favourite Aunty Donna sketches, not just because of the subject matter, but because it's so brilliantly produced, encompassing a range of different styles across the duration of one song. My favourite part is the Les Misérables bit, which is both hilarious and performed with admirable earnestness.

This is a particular breed of online musical comedy, involving cutting and pasting myriad clips of someone from television and online appearances, then mixing them into a solid track. Swedemason is the absolute master of this, as far as I'm concerned, and in the interests of not putting the disgraced face of Gregg Wallace in front of you for my former favourite track, Buttery Biscuit Bass, here's Mary Berry instead.

And an older classic to finish off with. This was one of the first tracks I ever heard from the Bonzo Dog Band, and I knew immediately that I was going to get on with their particular breed of nonsense. This is another great example of a clearly talented group of musicians doing a deliberately "bad" piece of music, and it only working because they're obviously skilled musicians. The clarinet solo in this is a work of genius.

There. Hope that's brightened up your Saturday evening. Enjoy!

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#oneaday Day 861: Round. One! FILM!

I went to see the Street Fighter movie today. I enjoyed it a lot! In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I legitimately find it quite baffling that some people have been seemingly quite angry about not liking it. I was watching Giant Bomb's Bomb-A-Thon livestream for part of last night, and one guy in the chat appeared to be furious that he had been to see it and not Digger. Each to their own, I guess.

Anyway, I went into the Street Fighter movie expecting something that was dumb but fun, and that's exactly what I got. Even as someone who is not particularly "into" Street Fighter, there was plenty of series fanservice in there. Rather wisely, the movie is set in the early 1990s, so the vast bulk of the cast consists of the most familiar faces from the series' early days — in other words, the cast of Street Fighter II, and a couple of additions from Super Street Fighter II (Cammy, Akuma) and Alpha (Dan). There's also an incredibly deep cut in the form of Joe, who only ever appeared as a non-playable enemy character in the first Street Fighter game.

The story, as you might expect for a Street Fighter movie, primarily concerns Ryu and Ken, who are given some extensive backstory, presented using extremely stylish anime-style sequences. Ryu beat Sagat in the first World Warrior tournament (as depicted in the original Street Fighter), but in doing so came perilously close to giving in to the Dark Hado and becoming Evil Ryu. His desire not to fall to evil resulted in him being unable to fully unleash a Hadouken when Gouken, sensei to him and Ken, was under attack by Akuma. This drove a wedge between Ryu and Ken, leaving Ryu to go into hiding, believing that he should leave fighting behind, and Ken to become a self-styled "sports entertainment" celebrity, hoovering up brand deals with the assistance of his manager, Dan.

I don't know Street Fighter lore extensively, but I got the impression that the movie plays a little fast and loose with the characters' backgrounds. As someone who doesn't particularly care about Street Fighter lore, I also don't care about this. In the context of the movie, their backgrounds and motivations for getting involved in the ongoing plot made sense — inasmuch as anything in this gleefully chaotic movie makes sense, anyway.

I won't summarise the entire plot here, but suffice to say that it involves M. Bison being Up To No Good, Akuma putting in an appearance, Chun-Li double-crossing the villains in her role as an Interpol agent, Cammy in her pre-having-broken-free-from-Bison phase and lots of people thumping one another.

Not all of the core cast of Street Fighter II are directly involved in the Big Plot, but they all get at least one fight scene. E. Honda, for example, only shows up for a fight with Ryu in a sauna so the latter can take the former's place in the tournament that forms the centrepiece to the plot — but it's a pretty great fight, with Honda using both his Hundred-Hand Slap and Flying Headbutt manoeuvre. (Unrelated fact: one of my friends once thought that he was saying "guffcake" when performing this move in the original Street Fighter II, and now I cannot know that move as anything other than "guffcake". I had to look up its actual name.)

Zangief is probably the most under-used of the core cast, with his role primarily consisting of getting angry that Ken ruined his steak dinner. He still performs a good few crowd-pleaser moves, though.

What I enjoyed most about the movie is that it's funny. Not in a "funny because it's so bad" sort of way, but in the sense that it's funny because it knows how silly and camp it all is, and absolutely leans hard into it. Bison even gets a "…for me, it was Tuesday" line in homage to the 1994 Street Fighter movie.

Ken is a particular highlight throughout, because he's a dickhead. Various entries in the series have both downplayed and emphasised this aspect of the character, and he's a real dickhead here, but not so irredeemably awful or unlikeable that he has no chance of redemption. On the contrary, he's mostly a dickhead because he's an idiot, and that makes for plenty of endearing comedy, particularly when paired up with Dan, who doesn't do a lot of fighting but has some amusing lines. There are some especially amusing scenes when Ken, Dan and Guile all try out out-masculine each other — with Dan, of course, coming off the worst.

In series tradition, the actual "tournament" isn't really an important plot point at all, as the main thrust of the story is Bison Being Up To No Good and what everyone else is doing about that. David Dastmalchian is a wonderful Bison, striking the perfect balance of sinister and absurd, and he frequently steals the show in the scenes where he appears. It's a bit of a shame he doesn't really get a good kicking — the ending is very clearly attempting to set up a sequel — but given the amount of other spectacular clashes throughout the movie (and the fact Bison does get a "behold my true power" moment when squaring off against Chun-Li), I can't really be too mad.

So yeah. I really enjoyed it. Not only did it do a good job of capturing the "vibe" of Street Fighter, but it was also an enjoyable, compelling movie. I like it better than Resident Evil; I didn't dislike Resident Evil, as I wrote the other day, but it did feel more like a series of entertaining vignettes rather than a coherent movie. Street Fighter, meanwhile, felt like it went places. They were often absurd, ridiculous places, yes, but one should expect nothing less from the series. It has, after all, always been extremely silly — no matter how seriously some people like to take playing the games, the series will always be the one with the stretchy-armed Indian, the green-skinned monstrous Brazilian, the American military man with the implausible hair and too many other examples of delightfully delirious nonsense to list in full here.

I feel you have to be a special kind of miserable to come out of that movie not having had a good time. No, it's not great art, it's not thought-provoking, it won't make you think about the human condition or any number of other philosophical concepts. It's a movie about people punching each other. And it's a good movie about people punching each other. If you go into it expecting anything else, that might be a you problem. And that's my final word!

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#oneaday Day 860: No pressure

I've been enjoying doing my stupid little doodles using the fancy little pen thing on my phone, but I find myself wondering if I should switch to pressure-sensitive mode. I feel the simplicity of the constant line thickness adds to the endearing slapdash MS Paint-style nature of the images, but at the same time there's something just… pleasing about the slightly more natural appearance of lines drawn with pressure sensitivity.

In other words, I think it's obvious that both are still "hand-drawn", but I think the pressure sensitivity makes that a little more obvious. The only tricky thing is that because drawing on a phone is not quite the same as drawing on paper, you can sometimes make inadvertent line weight errors, such as has happened with the left side of my beard in the right image above.

However, I am sort of thinking that the added "natural" look of things outweighs the possible need to actually have some technique discipline, because just tiny little things like the little "flicks" on the end of letters just… well, it just looks more like I've drawn it.

I dunno. I might experiment a bit over the next few days. I'm not going to get super ambitious or anything and I may just end up going back to the old style anyway — it's served me well for many years, after all — but I sometimes think it might be nice to actually try and develop my style somewhat. Maybe even improve it?! Who knows.

I was spurred on to thinking this by, of all things, a recent Game Grumps playthrough of Waterpark Simulator, during which Dan admitted that he had been trying his hand at drawing in private, but didn't think he'd particularly improved. Arin, meanwhile, was keen to help him out and offer him some friendly advice — though of course they both know that revealing your art to someone else is, in many ways, a means of making yourself extremely vulnerable, and thus Dan was hesitant, and Arin didn't want to push him too hard.

Some of the things Arin talked about got me thinking, though, particularly about the idea of how many of us never move beyond the idea of drawing symbols rather than actual things. The example he gives is an obvious one: when prompted to draw a house, what would you do? If the answer was to draw a square with a triangle roof, a door in the middle and windows in the corners, that's you drawing a symbol of a house, because a lot of houses don't actually look like that. However, we grew up understanding that this shape represents a house, and thus if you never build on your skills to observe and recreate your observations on paper (or virtual equivalent) then you never move beyond drawing those symbols.

That's not to say you have to, mind. One of the reasons I've always enjoyed drawing stickmen is that although they, themselves, are also symbols, it's also possible to personalise them very easily. Add a hairstyle, facial expressions, little details, and you take them from being a simple symbol into something with a bit more individuality and personality. It's obviously nothing like being able to actually draw a person, but it kind of is a step beyond just the simple symbols. I think, anyway.

So yeah. I might turn on pressure sensitivity for a bit and see how I like the results. I'm sure you're all super-thrilled to learn that. But hey. My blog, my useless ramblings. You're the one who clicked over here.

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#oneaday Day 859: Running on empty

My brain feels empty. I think it's at least partly having been on my own for a while, having been ill, having slept for 12 hours last night and just generally… I don't know, feeling a bit eh.

I'm keeping busy each day at work, to be sure, so it's not as if I have nothing to do — and I have some truly excellent games on the go right now, too, so it's not as if I have nothing to entertain me in the evening. But for the last few days in particular, I've just sort of reached the end of the working day, slumped onto the sofa and… eh.

Of course, being aware of this happening is always the first step in doing something about it, so I'm telling myself here and now that once I finish writing this post, I am going to fire up Ace Combat 8 and continue playing it, because I've been having a great time with that game and I am keen to continue doing so. I also think I might book myself a ticket to go see the Street Fighter movie on Friday after work. I enjoyed the experience of going to see the Resident Evil movie, even if the movie itself was just sort of "okay", and the Street Fighter trailer made the movie look like a lot of fun.

My only slight hesitation is that I'm not super-attached to the Street Fighter franchise. I mean, like most nerds of my age, I had a copy of Street Fighter II on SNES and played it to death back then, but since that time I've not really spent a ton of time keeping up with the franchise. I've dipped in and out here and there — notably with IV and 6 — but something in my brain always tells me that out of all the fighting game series out there, Street Fighter is, somehow, the most "boring" of them.

I know this is absolute nonsense, of course. Street Fighter is full of larger-than-life characters, including numerous utterly ridiculous examples. It has just as much sex appeal as something like The King of Fighters (which I've become thoroughly interested in since we've done all the NEOGEO cartridges for Evercade) and as bewilderingly large a cast at this point. Plus I think, despite everything, and despite how I haven't really kept up with the series actively, it still has one of the most iconic casts of any fighting game. And it looks very much like the movie focuses mostly on the core Street Fighter II cast, with the addition of a few favourites from subsequent entries, like Cammy from Super Street Fighter II and Dan from Street Fighter Alpha.

So yeah. I will correct my former statement: after I'm done here, I will first of all book a ticket to go see the Street Fighter movie on Friday evening, including the Nice Seats that were so pleasant last time, and then I will fire up Ace Combat 8 and continue playing it.

See? Sometimes all you need to do to get yourself out of a funk is to confront that funk and then throw a bunch of Shit You Actually Want To Do at it. So that's what I'm bloody well going to go and do right now.

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#oneaday Day 858: Long rest

I fell asleep at like 7pm yesterday. I had been feeling rough all day, so I thought I would get an early night. I didn't intend it to be quite so early, but evidently I needed the rest. I feel mostly better today, at least, but it did mean I forgot to write something before passing out yesterday. So here I am!

I wasn't really sure what to write about yesterday anyway. And to be honest, I'm not really sure what to write about right now, either. Oh, maybe I'll talk about cards. I made a video on an Atari ST game imaginatively called Cards, which will be releasing in the next couple of weeks, and doing so got me looking up some card games that I remember I used to play, particularly when I was at my grandparents' house. (The ST game also taught me how to play Cribbage, which I'd never come across before, but now really like!)

Either my Nan or my Grandad taught me to play a fair few card games, including some variation of Rummy (I'm not sure which one offhand as there seem to be about a million), along with several forms of Patience (or "Solitaire", if you prefer.)

I, of course, learned how to play what I now know as Klondike Solitaire as one of the first ones. I wonder why this one became one of the most popular games? Still, yes, I learned how to play that pretty early on. What I find slightly more interesting are two completely different solitaire games that I learned around the same time.

The first of these I knew as "Clock Patience". This involves dealing the pack face-down to make a "clock face" with a single "hand" in the middle. You end up with thirteen piles of four cards each, and your aim is to create the "clock", with A-Q acting as the numbers 1-12 and K acting as the "hand" in the middle. After dealing the cards, you draw the top card of the middle pile, then place it underneath the appropriate "clock" position, then turn over the top card of the same pile. You then repeat the process until you have either completed the "clock" or turned over four Kings; if the latter happens first, you lose. It's an entirely luck-based game with an apparent exact 1 in 13 chance of being able to win, but I always found the aesthetic aspect of it to be enormously pleasing.

The second unusual solitaire game I learned was known as Elevens. Here, you deal 9 cards onto the table in a 3×3 arrangement. You then look for either pairs of cards that add up to 11, or the J-Q-K sequence. When you have found one, you draw new cards from those that remain in your hand and put them over the pair or sequence, thereby updating the board. Your aim is to get rid of all the cards in your hand. Again, I think this is probably mostly luck-based, but there is at least a bit of brainpower involved in adding things up and spotting the sequences. I used to like this game because it was quick and simple: a lot easier to set up than Klondike, took up less space than Clock Patience, and very fast to play. I recall deliberately trying to clear a game of Elevens as quickly as possible for an additional challenge. Lots of fun.

Card games are fun for the tactile element, though it's hard to beat the convenience factor of playing on computer — particularly for games like Cribbage, where the scoring can get quite complicated. One of the nice things about those three forms of solitaire that I learned, though, is that they're all pretty straightforward to play without needing to make complex calculations or check your "working" as you go. I remember they used to keep me busy in a time before portable games consoles (or being allowed to take my SNES with me!), along with playing games like "Dots and Boxes" and "OXO" with my Nan.

"OXO" you say? Draw a big grid, place X's and O's on it anywhere, your choice. If you complete the word "OXO" you get a point. Deep strategy! Not really. But I found it fun.

There we go, a post. Happy now? I'm off to get some lunch.

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#oneaday Day 857: Just normal men

A few weeks back I was introduced to a Bluesky account that apparently made the jump over from Twitter after being widely beloved back there in the pre-Nazi bar days: "We're just normal men".

The sole reason for this account's existence is so that it can, once a week on Monday, repost a clip from a Children's BBC continuity section, during which the presenter, Lauren Layfield, explodes into an uncontrollable fit of snort-laughing after her companion, the puppet mascot Hacker T Dog (puppeteered and played by Phil Fletcher), came out with an incredible non-sequitur of a response to a discussion about ice dancers.

The original broadcast was back in 2016, but, rather bizarrely, it wasn't until 2022 that it went truly viral. It's not hard to see why, even if it was a few years late; even when seen devoid of the original context, as many people online did, it's an infectiously funny clip. Seeing people corpsing, particularly during a live broadcast as seen here, is always entertaining — and it's even more entertaining to see a puppeteer leaning fully into corpsing by allowing his character to react in a very "human" sort of way.

My extremely late discovery of this clip via my chance encounter with the aforementioned Bluesky account led me on a little sidequest to understand where this came from and why it happened. The nitty-gritty of how it went viral can be found on the KnowYourMeme page linked above, but by far the most interesting thing for me in general was the broader existence of Hacker T Dog, and how he is a mascot character that is genuinely very funny indeed.

Back when I was growing up, Children's BBC didn't exist as a standalone channel; instead, it was a catch-all term for blocks of programming that were aimed at 6-12 year olds. Probably the most well-known and popular of these blocks was the after-school programming that ran roughly between about 3pm and 5.30 or so, and consisted of a variety of shows including cartoons, edutainment shows (distinct from "Schools" programming), kid-focused dramas such as Byker Grove, magazine shows such as Blue Peter and even a kid-friendly take on the news in the form of Newsround. Each show was punctuated by a brief continuity section hosted by, at various times, Philip Schofield, Andy Crane and Andi Peters (and doubtless some others I've forgotten), often accompanied by mascot characters.

The most… "memorable" of these mascot characters included Gordon T Gopher, a gopher puppet that communicated exclusively by squeaking, Sweep (as in Sooty And) style, followed up by Edd the Duck, who was basically the exact same character, but in the form of a quacking duck puppet. Both puppets were positioned as "cool dudes", such was the fashion at the time, but their characterisation was mainly limited to what you could interpret from the way the main hosts interacted with them.

Various Children's BBC presenters, along with the mascots, would also appear on Saturday morning programming such as Going Live, Live and Kicking and whatever came after that. Again, the mascots' role was relatively limited; although both Gordon and Edd's puppeteers clearly made an effort to make them as amusingly obnoxious as possible at times, there was only so much they could do without giving them the actual ability to speak human words.

Which is why Hacker T Dog is so interesting. Hacker T Dog speaks like a human being, and thus, despite being a puppet, has a much more equal relationship with his co-host. This means that situations such as the "just normal men" incident can occur, because the human host and the puppet can have some actual chemistry with one another — or perhaps it's more accurate to say the puppeteer is able to develop a much closer relationship with the human presenter than would be possible using a non-verbal mascot character.

I've been watching some other clips of Hacker T Dog working alongside Layfield and various other CBBC presenters, and he's consistently amusing and funny. The energy that Phil Fletcher brings to the character is infectious and appealing, and the fact that he seems to quite often be attempting to make his co-star laugh through improvisation and ad-libbed non-sequiturs makes it all the more entertaining. It gives Hacker T Dog an actual personality beyond "he's a cool dude!!", which is all we ultimately ever knew about Gordon and Edd.

I'm just sorry that I grew up much too late to have really had a chance to see Hacker T Dog at his finest in his original context, but at least there are plenty of clip compilations on YouTube of his finest moments. And Hacker/Fletcher is actually still performing: he joined the regular presenting team for Blue Peter back in 2025.

It's nice to find something that brings a little joy in this hellscape of a world we live in today. And "we're just normal men" definitely falls into that category for me.

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#oneaday Day 856: Flurry of activity

As so often happens after I have a day of feeling a bit maudlin, today I had a day where I got a lot done. Six videos, to be exact, including both Atari 8-bit and Atari ST videos. It's good to be getting back into the rhythm of these, and I really enjoyed the games I played for these vids — hopefully that comes across in the final products, which will be released over the course of the next few weeks!

I've definitely made the right decision to refocus my YouTube effort back on what I was having the most fun with in the first place. I am never going to "make it big" on YouTube and I have no intention of making it into a second job in an attempt to do so; I already keep more than busy enough for the day job, and I want YouTube to be fun. But I also want it to reflect the things that are important to me — hence the refocus on Atari stuff.

I think part of the reason I pressed pause on the A to Z series a while back was because I was worried I was going to start running out of things to cover. But going through the spreadsheet of reviews I put together a while back, it's clear that isn't going to happen for a long time, on either Atari 8-bit or Atari ST. There may be some individual letters that are a little short on things to cover — as I recall, I was running out of games that began with "Y" on ST, unless I wanted to cover various iterations on Yahtzee over and over again! — but I can just skip those if necessary. Or, indeed, I can play a multitude of Yahtzees, since I'm sure at least some of them do something vaguely interesting with the concept!

Anyway, as a preview of what's to come, I will be covering Desmond's Dungeon, Eastern Front (1941) and Firefleet on Atari 8-bit, and Archipelagos, Blasteroids and Cards on Atari ST. Most of these are new to me, which is exciting; I'd played Eastern Front and Blasteroids before, but I was a bit young to understand Eastern Front when I was a kid, so it's been interesting to return to that now I know what a wargame is. I'm not convinced I know how to play effectively, but it was fun giving it a go, regardless.

I think the biggest pleasant surprise of the day for me was Archipelagos. I remember seeing this back when it originally released and thinking it looked thoroughly interesting, and it really, really is. The version I was playing had a strange bug where every fifth level kills you instantly, but since you can just skip levels at will — and there are 9,999 of them — you shouldn't feel too bad about just skipping those ones that don't work. The version I was playing was the hard disk converted version by Pera Putnik, so it's entirely possible that the conversion process just made something go a bit skew-whiff somewhere; I haven't yet tried a disk-only version of it. Either way, it's a thoroughly interesting game, and you'll get to see exactly why quite soon!

So yeah. It's been a good day. Okay, I didn't get up until noon because I was having strange dreams and they put me in a bit of a funk at the start of the day, but I began my day with the intention of making some videos, and by jingo I've gone and done it: recorded, edited and exported, all in a day. Not bad, eh?

Now I think I've earned an hour or two of Ace Combat to celebrate. And maybe some ice cream.

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#oneaday Day 855: On my own

I'm alone in the house right now (apart from the cats), as Andie is away looking after her mother, who has just been in hospital. Nothing to worry about or anything, but she needs looking after for a few days, so I am holding the fort back home while she does that.

I tend to find when I'm alone in the house I want to behave… unusually. Last night I slept on the sofa for half of the night because I felt like it (and our sofa is quite comfy). I talk to myself. I tend to find that it's harder to break out of indecisive autistic funks. But I survive; I hang in there. I've done it before, I'll do it again, and I know it's not forever.

A lot of us probably don't think about loneliness as a serious consideration when we're younger. Indeed, when I was a teen, I remember people who were by themselves — voluntarily or otherwise — were routinely mocked as a "Larry" (as in "Larry Loner") because the norm was to have friends, and to be pretty much constantly surrounded by them.

Of course, that didn't stop some of us from feeling lonely in private, even when we did have friends. I often felt quite lonely and isolated due to the fact that I lived in a village that was seven miles away from where my school and friends were. When I was old enough to get the independence afforded by being able to cycle and, later, drive places by myself, it was a godsend; some of my fondest memories of my youth correspond with enjoying this freedom alongside others.

In fact, some of my absolute fondest memories of this time are also some of the least remarkable things that occurred, such as the one evening several friends and I drove to a pub in the middle of nowhere while listening to the cassette copy of my Essential Acid Jazz CD I'd prepared precisely for occasions like this, had a few drinks, stopped at the 24-hour Tesco petrol station for late-night sandwiches, and then went on our merry ways. It was a completely unremarkable evening, but it represented everything good about that time in our lives: the ability to be carefree; the ease with which you could surround yourself with people that cared about you; the freedom to do pretty much whatever you wanted, within reason. "Do what you want" doesn't have to be anything dramatic or fancy; sometimes, all you really want is to pass the time in good company.

I miss that. I really miss that. I am grateful and thankful to have the company of Andie most of the time, but when I'm on my own for a long period like this, I cannot help but wish for times past: times when people had time for one another, and when you could do things, with other people, on a whim without 1) having to prepare several months in advance, 2) without people being likely to drop out of proceedings at the last minute and 3) without people suddenly informing you that something you had been enjoying together for many years was actually not, in fact, to their taste, and that they didn't care it was important to you in particular.

We've gone terribly, horribly wrong somewhere. Human beings weren't made to be alone. And yet even with the myriad ways with which we can supposedly "connect" with one another today, it's hard not to feel exceedingly, excruciatingly lonely. Particularly when you really are, as I am right now, on your own.

Oh well. Nothing that can be done, really. Time to just make the best of thing and enjoy my last couple of days off before getting back to work on Monday.

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